Sunday, June 1, 2014

Yggdrasil and the Yahoo GOP Tree House: Free Tea Bags for Me and Thee

The mighty trunk and branches of the Travilah Oak, Potomac, Md., 5:30PM June 1, 2014.

Now that the Wye Oak is no more, if Maryland wishes to keep a SPECIFIC white oak as its state tree (rather than a species), I PROUDLY nominate this amazing tree, which has been around since at least 1787 and more likely the 1760s.

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Just a couple notes (this was not the entry I intended to post) ...

First, the GOP is in full tilt-a-whirl, mouth-foaming, shrieking, frenzied "Impeach Barry the Muslim - Atheist - Kenyan Socialist" (huh??) apoplexy over the prisoner swapthat the Obama administration arrangedas a deal to secure the release of Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl -- held for five years by the Taliban in the wastes of Afghanistan.

The swap involves exchanging Bergdahl for five of the prisoners still languishing in theblack hole of Guantánamo Baydetention camp that Pres. Obama should have unilaterally closed on day 1 of his presidency. (It's not even clear the five have yet been released. But let me add that the Israel government, hero of fundie Protestants and neocon imperialists everywhere, does this stuff literally every day, usually at a 100-to-1 ratio.)

Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl in an updated photo.

Welcome home, soldier.

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I only mention this because if you read the comments that followone of the Yahoo news articles-- tens of thousands of them -- you get a clue of the sheer magnitude of the political dung-filling ignorance that permeates the American body politic that calls powerfully to mind the Yahoos in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels.

These comments invariably come from the legions of 70-something year old ultra-rightwing white men seated in their Hoverounds in front of malware-infected computers (courtesy all the X-rated and DOLLAR COLLAPSE IMMINENT! BUY GOLD BULLION NOW! websites they frequent) as they wait for their Social Security checks to arrive. Or from chronically unemployed and unemployable 50-somethings living on Social Security disability and Medicaid while spouting libertarian gibberish.

The Yahoos from "Gulliver's Travels." Why, they appear to be far more civilized than their ignorant, clueless, hateful counterparts who comment on any Yahoo news article.

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True, it might be a subset of the overall country -- the bulk of which really has no idea about anything, though where we are today, that actually might be a good thing -- but it shows how toxic our political environment has become, and the damage being caused by the for-profit media/entertainment complex that keeps folks ginned up in a state of hysteria.

OK, that's just messed up.

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Secondly, I also would like to note this article: Michael B. Kelley, a hapless little instrument of corporate oligarchy and compromised / make-believe journalist for Business Insider, is so creepily obsessed with Edward J. Snowden that he rounded up some quack-astrology-shaman "body-language expert" Dr. Nick Morgan -- whose Twitter page shows what a carnival barker fraud he really is -- to "prove" that Snowden was "lying" -- although exactly about what isn't clear.

Kelley's own predilections are shown by calling the con-artist a "best-selling" author, not to mention the litany of Snowden-fixated pieces over the past few weeks.

Morgan is a charlatan through-and-through peddling whatever early 21st Century version of snake oil and bullshit there exists to be unloaded on the dumb public to "cure" its present-day equivalent of "neuralgia, vapors, distemper, dropsy, and bad humors."

Above: The Twitter image of the good doctor rounded up by Kelley, Dr. Nick Morgan, a man whose arm-chair "analysis" beggars the imagination in its sheer stupidity.

Meanwhile, the silly, dull, pornstachioed Kelley is a $1.98 tool of the military-industrial-surveillance state with a great career ahead of him as a staff writer for The WaHoPo* and as an "objective journalistic expert" on Meet the Whore during the run-up to the next neocon war of aggression.

Michael B. Kelley: "The best that overpriced journalism school and the corporate oligarchical overclass can buy you in 2014."

*Presumably, under impending reign of Jeff Bezos -- if that bit of corporate-whoring nonsense is still on track.

To paragraph Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, if the professional life of journalist and pundit Michael T. Kelly wasthe obscene tragedy, that of this journalist and pundit-in-the-making Michael B. Kelley is the rotten farce.

What we really need is -- pictured above -- the Great and Mysterious Martha "M.J." McAteer, the "gatekeeper" extraordinaire during the 1990s "Washington Consensus" halcyon days of The WaHoPo, to ensure that only Sally Quinn / Beltway Establishment-approved "voices" are heard in the (print version of the) "newspaper of record" -- while Benji Wittes, Sebastian Mallaby, and Fred Hiatt (in the words of a wise sage Prince) party like it's 1999.

OK, that's all for now. I have a number of pictures that I would like to post from my afternoon jaunt up to Grosvenor Park and ride with LP.

About Me

I'm 47 years old and live and work in Washington, D.C. I have a background in meteorology and journalism, and more recently in public policy with a focus on environmental and energy issues. I have worked as an earth (atmospheric) sciences and astronomy writer for NASA and the American Physical Society. At present, I am a federal contractor on clean energy-related issues. I am from New Jersey and have lived in Seattle, Texas, England, and Belgium, although I've been in Maryland and D.C. for most of my life.